House GOP cuts border funding bill

House Republicans unveiled a significantly pared-back emergency funding package of $659 million for the border crisis and are angling for a Thursday vote before Congress flees Washington for the August recess.

That figure is dramatically lower than the $3.7 billion President Barack Obama originally requested from Capitol Hill to respond to the influx of unaccompanied children, primarily from Central America, at the Texas border.

Story Continued Below

It’s also a far cry from the $1.5 billion in emergency funding that was initially proposed last week by House Republicans.

“I think there is sufficient support in the House to move this bill,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday. “We have a little more work to do, though. We should do something before we go home.”

The boost in funding runs through the close of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, and will be fully offset. It still includes provisions that would change a 2008 anti-trafficking law, which would effectively allow the unaccompanied children to be more quickly deported — a revision that is unacceptable to most Democrats.

House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer said Tuesday that GOP leadership has not yet approached Democrats about securing their votes for the supplemental, but Hoyer believes there will be few Democrats willing to join with Republicans if the legislation makes changes to the 2008 law.

“I don’t see myself trying to get votes for a language change whose ramifications nobody knows at this time,” Hoyer said.

And border-state House Democrats, whom Republicans hope to pluck off in favor of their funding bill, have their own issues with the GOP plan.

Although he is one of the few Democrats who has endorsed changes to the 2008 law, Arizona Rep. Ron Barber said he had some concerns with other provisions in the bill — specifically one that allows border patrol agents access to federal lands, which Barber said “doesn’t make any sense.”

The Democratic factor, combined with persistent reservations from some House conservatives, makes it unclear whether even a bare-bones border crisis package can pass the Republican-led House before lawmakers leave for a five-week congressional recess.

Despite the sliced numbers, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) emerged from the closed-door meeting saying he would not vote for the legislation.

“That is money that America does not have,” added Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

About two-thirds of the money will be allocated to the Department of Homeland Security — the primary agency overseeing immigration and border enforcement — and the Justice Department, which has jurisdiction over immigration court judges, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.).

Roughly one-third will be for the Department of Health and Human Services, which is charged with caring for the unaccompanied migrant children once they come under U.S. custody, Rogers said.

Another $40 million is designated for the three countries from which the vast majority of the children are coming from — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala — to use to help repatriate the minors once they are deported from the United States. Rogers said House Republicans will include a provision that says if the countries do not “act in good faith,” the United States will rescind the aid.

The GOP border-crisis package will also boost the number of detention beds available for immigrants under custody, as well as doubling the funding forNational Guard troops on the Texas border in an effort to relieve overwhelmed border patrol agents.

The bump in funds for the Justice Department will provide for more temporary immigration court judges, and Rogers said the legislation will also pay for videoconferencing in all court hearing rooms nationwide, which should relieve the backlog of immigration court cases and process them more quickly.

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who led an effort to write policy recommendations to respond to the border crisis, also said the measure includes a “sense of the Congress” resolution that says unaccompanied children should not be housed in military facilities.

In recent weeks, unaccompanied migrant children — who are entering primarily through the Rio Grande Valley area in Texas, according to government statistics — have been transported to military facilities in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where they are being housed.

The legislation also allows border patrol agents access onto federal lands, and it includes a measure banning immigrants with “serious drug-related convictions” from applying for asylum.

“It’s not a complicated bill,” Granger said.

House Republicans formally introduced the bill Tuesday, teeing up a Thursday vote on the House floor.